In recent years, with the development of highly-functional terminals, such as smart phones, there has been an increase in patterns of usage where information in, for example, newspapers, magazines, and video image streams, is downloaded via mobile communication networks and then browsed. Furthermore, if a mobile communication technology, such as the Long Term Evolution (LTE), that can cope with high speeds and offer low delays becomes widely used, the number of users who previously obtained information through papers or personal computers but now use mobile terminal to browse that information increases even if the users use mobile terminals other than smart phones. In such a case, for example, there is concern that resources will run short near main stations during commuting hours in the morning and evening due to the large amounts of information being downloaded in specific cells.
In general, pieces of information on data downloaded by multiple users are not different for each user but are basically the same. Consequently, individually transmitting such data to each terminal is not efficient in terms of the resources.
Accordingly, as a technology that efficiently uses the resources, there is a known contents distribution system, that distributes the same content to a lot of mobile terminals located in the same communication area. With this contents distribution system, if a server transmits given content to a first mobile terminal, the server also transmits the same content to a second mobile terminal that is located in the same communication area in which the first mobile terminal is located. Specifically, with this technology, multiple mobile terminals other than the mobile terminal that requested the given content also download that same content.    Patent Literature 1: Japanese Laid-open Patent Publication No. 2002-369233
However, with the related technology, because the total number of pieces of data transmitted from a server to terminals is large and because a memory with enormous capacity needs to be installed in the terminal side, there is a problem in that resources are not efficiently used.
For example, with the related contents distribution system, regardless of whether content is needed, the content is transmitted to all the terminals that could possibly use the content. Specifically, even if another mobile terminal frequently requests the content from the server, each mobile terminal needs to have a memory capacity that can download the content that is transmitted in response to each request. Consequently, a large-capacity memory is installed in each mobile terminal; therefore, it is hard to say that the resources are efficiently used.
Furthermore, with the related contents distribution system, if a single mobile terminal requests a given content when hundreds of mobile terminals are present in the same communication area, all of the other mobile terminals download the content. Consequently, the total number of pieces of data transmitted from the server to the terminals is large, and thus the resource usage increases.